<p> Throughout history women have attempted to reach senior leadership positions in churches of all denominations, but only within the past three centuries have women gained a presence in such positions. This thesis was undertaken to fill the gap of current research on the leadership roles of women within the ministry of traditionally conservative churches. Data were collected through surveys and follow-up interviews. Twelve women who held senior leadership positions in American Baptist churches participated in the case study. Their stories of religious transformation, social support, and discrimination are highlighted in this study. Their callings were both a personal and religious experience that could only be captured through interdisciplinary, qualitative research methods. Religious studies, women's studies, and critical theory were combined to create a feminist narrative of spiritual women who were both leaders within their faith and change agents of conservative, religious traditions. The analysis focuses on their roles in cultural and religious reforms. In addition, the author drew upon recent theories and empirical research on collaborative, transformational, and spiritual leadership and Maslow's earlier work on human motivation to better understand the leadership roles of women in the ministry.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the cultural and religious dynamics of the North Carolina Piedmont's non-planter social order. I look in depth at the modernizing elements of antebellum religion, particularly the sensibility of liberality that accompanied institutional development, how church disciplinary procedures adapted to changing social reality, and the formation of middle class style nuclear families under the aegis of evangelical prescription. In addition to using denominational records, I utilize four diaries of ordinary Piedmont residents in extended explorations of how individuals enacted in their private lives the public lessons of evangelicalism. I conclude that an evangelical ethic developed that existed alongside the dominant planter ideology, and that ethic formed the basis for both unity, and dissent, in the late antebellum period.</p>

Thesis (D.Miss.)--Asbury Theological Seminary, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3228610. Adviser: Michael A. Rynkiewich. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 3018.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Religious Studies, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 7, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-07, Section: A, page: 2744. Adviser: David Brakke.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of French and Italian Studies, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 13, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3145. Adviser: H. Wayne Storey.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of English, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 20, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-10, Section: A, page: 3962. Adviser: Patrick Brantlinger.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 23, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-11, Section: A, page: 4347. Adviser: Paul V. Spade.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Princeton University, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3273509. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 3093. Adviser: Stephen F. Teiser.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Religious Studies, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4722. Adviser: John R. McRae.

This dissertation examines the memorialization of dramatic action in seventeenth-century sculpture, and its implications for the representation of sanctity. Illusions of transformation and animation enhanced the human tendency to respond to three-dimensional images in interpersonal terms, vivifying the commemorative connotations that predominate in contemporary writing on the medium. The first chapter introduces the concept of seeming actuality, a juxtaposition of the affective appeal of real presence and the ideality of the classical statua that appeared in the work of Stefano Maderno, and was enlivened by Gianlorenzo Bernini into paradoxes of permanent instantaneity. This new mystical sculpture was mimetic, not because it depicted events narrated elsewhere, but imitated mutable, time-bound, spiritual activity with arresting immediacy in the here and now. No other form of image could so fully evoke the mingling of human immanence and divine transcendence that was the fundamental basis of sanctity. Chapters Two through Four closely analyze the sculptural construction hagiographic identities for Ludovica Albertoni, Alessandro Sauli, and John of the Cross, and their interplay with political, social, and religious factors. The discovery of connections between marble and wooden statuary further broadens our understanding of the expressive range of the medium. The homology between saintly and sculptural exemplarity reveals a far more dynamic, interactive, and rhetorical conception of the medium than is portrayed in early modern theoretical writings.